Onboarding sessions

Your onboarding contact at Backed takes your team from a signed contract to your first live grant round. You get an onboarding plan, three 1:1 sessions and a recording of each, at no cost beyond your subscription. In each session your onboarding contact shows a step and then your team does it in your own organisation, so by the end you can set up and run rounds yourselves.

Your onboarding plan

The plan works back from the date your first real round opens to applicants. It lists your deadlines, the data you are bringing across, which processes you need on day one and which can follow, and time held back as a buffer. Most organisations go live in 6 to 8 weeks; a government agency running its first round can plan on 4 to 6.

The three sessions

1. Your organisation, registration and application forms. Organisation details and brand, Terminology, Administrators and their permissions, Two-factor authentication and SSO, categories and tags, the registration and application forms, emails, adding and importing applicants, and setting up and publishing a grant round.
2. Assessment, decisions, letters and contracts. The assessment form, assessors and assessment rounds, conflicts of interest, funding decisions with their letters, contract templates, and sending and counter-signing a contract.
3. Milestones, payments and reporting. Milestone templates and reviews, the portfolio and exports, the audit and email logs, and, if your organisation uses it, quarterly reporting and board packs. Paying grants from Backed is coming; until then, pay from your finance system.

Each session walks the go-live checklists for what it covers. After session 3 your lead Administrator signs those checklists off on your first real round.

A few settings are kept by your onboarding contact rather than set on a screen: which parts of Backed are turned on for your organisation (such as assessments, contracts, verifiers, quarterly reporting and feedback), your time zone, currency and tax rate, the scoring calculation method for assessments, and the margins of contract PDFs. Your onboarding contact sets these; tell them if one needs to change.

How to prepare

• For session 1, separate what an applicant tells you once when they register (their organisation's name, ABN and contacts) from the questions they answer for each funding application. The first go on the registration form, the second on the application form. Bring your current forms and email wording, and the names of the people who will administer Backed.
• For session 2, write down your assessment framework: the criteria, how each is scored and weighted, and who assesses what. Bring your decision letters and your standard contract, marked up where each applicant's details go.
• For session 3, work back from what you report on: what your board and funders need to know, and so what you collect from grantees at application, at each milestone and in each report.

Find your plan and recordings

Go to Settings > Onboarding. It shows what your onboarding team has given your organisation; recordings and documents open in a new tab. You need access to your organisation's settings to open it.

• Your onboarding plan, with the date it was delivered and Open.
• Sessions: one row for each of the three sessions. A session not held yet reads Not yet held. A held session has Watch recording, its date, and Covered: with the checklists it walked.
• Demo videos and Training, when your onboarding contact has added any. Show the demo videos to administrators who join later.
• Security and privacy review: the security pack and data-sovereignty statement, each with the date it was requested and delivered. See Security and privacy review.
• Milestones: Contract signed and Went live, and the number of days between them.

If you are your organisation's lead Administrator and haven't finished setting up your organisation, the page starts with Organisation setup: how many steps are done, the next step, and Resume organisation setup, which opens setup at that step.

Until anything is recorded, the page says Nothing has been recorded yet. Your onboarding contact adds each recording and document as your onboarding goes.

See also

• Migrating to Backed
• Checklist - Organisation
• Checklist - Funding Rounds & Grant Management